


The Devil Caught Your Eyes

by vegarin



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-14
Updated: 2010-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegarin/pseuds/vegarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer in Florida. While Harry is away, young Dexter is sorely tested.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil Caught Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Written during Season One.

The Florida sun burns.

Dexter stops the lawn mower and swats the flies away. Sweat trickles down his back, leaving sticky, moist trails against his t-shirt. His hands are stretched thinly against the handles, his fingers twitchy, listless. He stares at his trembling fingers and suddenly he recognizes it for what it is. This is early – usually he can last a month, but, this time, the lethargy is unaccountably returning only after a couple of weeks.

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's Harry's absence. Whatever the reason, it needs to wait eight more days until Harry's return from the trip. Eight more days, and he can go on the next hunt with Harry. Until then, this _it_ is to be ignored. Dexter pushes and pushes and pushes until it is safely tucked away - tightly wrapped, knotted and coiled, somewhere within, where it isn't to be touched.

He breathes in and starts the mower again. Soon enough, he's immersed back into the task, counting the seconds as he pushes the machine across the backyard. Gradually, the vibration of the machine underneath his hands settles into a rhythm.

Incessant. Insistent. Rhythm.

This gnaws at him, at _it_ – gnaws, hisses, at this something in him.

His fingernails dig into his palms.

"Dex! You gonna eat or what?"

The voice breaks the unsettling rhythm, and he stops to look at his palms. They're red, welted. He absently rubs them on his pants and turns towards the backdoor, where his sister stands, looking thoroughly annoyed.

"I've called you like ten times," she huffs, brushing her unruly bangs away from her face.

He smiles because that is the appropriate response. He drops the machine and walks across the backyard.

"Coming!"

There's no pain in his palms.

* * *

The house is heavy with the smell of burnt toasts and the sense of emptiness that has always been present ever since _Mom_. Something else is in the air, something sharp and saccharin – he suspects Deb has been making ice tea. The dust specks dance across the living room, bathed in the light seeping between the wispy curtains and open windows. Dexter swipes his shirtsleeve across his forehead, wiping off the sweat, and adds vacuuming to the list of things to do.

The lunch is yet another bland ham-and-cheese sandwich, for the third day in a row. At the kitchen table, Deb pushes a plate over to his side and pours two glasses of ice tea, with extra sugar in his. She sinks on the chair across his and declares, "'m going out later."

The sandwich isn't really holding his attention - it is plausible that this is the least appetizing thing he has seen in his day - so he plays with the ice tea glass instead of chewing down the food, absently drawing a smiley face on the wet surface.

" _Dex_." Deb again.

The thick annoyance in her voice finally signals to him that he. needs. to. pay. attention. to. her. right. now. Apparently brothers, by default, do not pay attention to their younger sisters; at the same time, they are also required to take care of them and ascertain that they stay clear away from trouble. How both objectives can be obtained at the same time is always a mystery to him. Still, Harry's strictest order is to keep an eye on his sister, so he asks the obligatory question: "Where're you going? When're you gonna be back?"

"Soccer, like I told you a thousand times yesterday."

He recalls hearing something about it, between her random observations on the TV show characters and what her friends said about this and that. Though "a thousand times" is a hyperbole at its best, he knows his sister well enough that he wisely neglects to point that out. "And?"

Deb rolls her eyes. "Before dinner. Is that okay with you, sir?"

Sarcasm. Okay, he knows he can ignore it without sounding an alarm. "What do you want for dinner?" Not that there is much left in terms of choice. Probably tomato pasta, he thinks, cataloguing the items left in the kitchen cabinet.

"Whatever." Deb makes a dismissive hand wave and stands up. After stuffing the leftover sandwich and a bottle of coke into her tattered backpack, she sinks down on the living room couch to re-tie the shoelaces. She looks up at him only after she's done. "You gonna play basketball later?"

He tries not to show his distaste at the idea. He plays, because that is what senior boys do when they're not rich enough to go down to Cancun for summer vacation – play basketball and football all afternoon until you drop, and then you start drinking cheap beer before the sun sinks down the horizon. Dexter usually gets away with a bottle or two instead of a six-pack because he is a cop's son, and if he gets busted, he'd really get busted. If he is lucky, maybe he will make it home before dinner this afternoon. "Don't I always?"

Apparently that is enough. She shrugs and grabs her backpack. "'kay. See you later, Dex."

The next second, she is already out through the door, disappearing without one backward glance.

He stares after her for a moment and thinks back to a pig-tailed baby girl who stared at him behind Harry's leg. It is one of Dexter's first (remembered) memories, this girl, barely a toddler, and her tiny hands tightly wrapped around Harry's knee, staring up at him with awe, like he was her newest toy.

For years after that moment, his little sister refused to part with Dexter for any reason without giving him a kiss on the cheek for goodbye.

People change their patterns inexplicably because, apparently, they grow up. Because even though years ago, for the little Debra, it was imperative that she kissed him on the cheek for goodbye, now such ritual is no longer even observed. People grow up and change their minds about things and do different things because they start _feeling_ differently about things without logic or reason.

People change. He doesn't.

Another thing he needs to hide better, he thinks.

* * *

Two-thirty. He should really be out on the field, playing ball with other guys. It's a good cover, one approved by Harry, but today Dexter isn't out there. He reasons that one slip-off is not enough to cause any suspicion. He can still get away with a couple more. Next week, however, he'd have to go back to the game.

For now, he drinks his ice tea, chews on chocolate cookies and flips through the college-level physiology textbook that Harry gave him for his birthday. He observes the pictures and traces his fingers over the inscriptions. Circulation system (blood). Arteries. Aorta. Carotid artery. He can feel them under his fingertips when he imagines his hands around a neck. Any neck. Breaking one isn't hard at all, but usually it's the knife that makes things livelier.

The hot, smooth, sticky sensation of blood, flowing in and out. In and out. On his hands.

 _No_.

Not. Not yet.

Harry. And the Code. They tide back just in time, and Dexter almost violently snaps the textbook shut. This isn't helping, he decides.

He takes a glass of ice tea to the porch outside, stares at the half-mowed grass across the backyard for a long moment. It calms it down, but only a little. It's even more difficult to suppress the urges alone. Without anyone around, there's nothing to distract him, no pretense to master, no random observation on human behaviors to make.

At the same time, alone, he can be true to self.

Like, at this moment, when he first hears the whimper.

His head turns automatically to the source of the sound, and – _no, no, no_ – he sees a dog, a yellow-furred puppy, whimpering right under the fence that cuts off the neighboring yard from theirs. Their neighbor doesn't have any pet, Dexter knows.

So this is a stray dog.

There's no one in the backyard.

This is...not good.

Dexter tests himself by stepping out of the porch and onto the grass. He tests himself even further by taking a few steps towards the fence. The puppy has begun to whine even more loudly by now, actively getting on his nerve.

This is not good. This is, in fact, bad.

He stops a few steps away from the fence and stares down at the animal. It stops whining and looks up. Then it stares at him with what he assumes to be the literal version of the puppy-dog eyes that any human being is supposed to find endearing and cute and loveable and other positively-associated emoting adjective that he does not understand.

This time is no exception.

This is unfortunate, because now he finds himself quickly cataloguing where his equipment pack is and calculating if this can work. Some of them are locked inside the cabinet in Harry's room, under the rifle shelf. It has been off-limit ever since Deb's unauthorized gun-usage, but Harry himself has been the one who taught Dexter how to open assorted locks, which include cabinet doors. Dexter wonders if Harry had enough foresight to reinforce the lock somehow – which would mean that Harry does not trust him.

He is not sure which would be more unsettling – finding it impossible to open the locked cabinet, or finding out that he can, and that Harry trusts him this much.

The puppy whimpers again. The sunlight sizzles.

His fingers, drumming against his knee, start to twitch.

* * *

He pauses when he hears the noise outside. Time: three-twenty. Deb shouldn't be home until five, at the earliest, so he has time. Or so he's thought. He strains to hear the sound coming from outside the house - the door opens downstairs, and there are footsteps.

Dexter snaps up, tucks away the makeshift key-opener into his pocket, and carefully opens the door. When he steps out of Harry's room, he can hear giggles, hyper, whispery giggles and voices. Two of them.

One of them is Deb's. The other isn't.

"Sure this's okay, Morgan?"

"No one's home" – Deb's breathless voice echoes from the direction of the living room – "until five or so, so we've got time. Plenty."

His sister's voice sounds, well, different. Dexter tries to recall any other time when she sounded remotely like this and comes up with the unfortunate conclusion that she does not sound like his sister. She sounds suspiciously like Jennifer at the prom, which he definitely did not enjoy, when she tried to –

Oh.

Sex is another human aspect that he finds intriguing yet vaguely distant. He doesn't dislike it, and his body often does react, but what the fuss is all about, he does not get. The elation he usually feels comes from elsewhere – which is, of course, another thing that he needs to hide.

Deb's making these interesting, never-heard-before sounds, and the boy is even louder, and Dexter ponders his options. This is irritating, really, because it's an unfortunate timing, and now he has to actually make a decision. Other brothers of younger sisters, what would they do? Snicker away? Ignore it and repress it forever? More important and relevant - what would Harry want him to do?

That does it, simply enough.

Dexter steps down the stairs, trying to make as much noise as humanly possible. However, apparently it was not loud enough because, even when he turns the corner into the full view of the living room, they are still at it on the couch - the boy's lips all over her and one hand is sliding up inside her t-shirt, revealing too much, and Deb, all legs and long hair cascading over the couch onto the floor, is raking her fingers over the boy's shoulder, back, and down.

Her t-shirt slips off one shoulder. The pale skin underneath catches his eyes, as does her flushed face. The image does not really register. He blinks, because reconciling the two images – of the little Debra and this girl whispering and moaning in front of him – seems rather incomprehensible.

But the skin, the flushed skin underneath, his eyes linger on it before he can help himself, and, for a second, he imagines blood –

"Fuck, who the hell –"

The loud yelps cut off his progressively difficult thought-process, and Dexter turns his focus back into the scene in front of him just in time to see the boy spring up and Deb looking at him, both completely flustered.

Clothes are picked up and shoes are put back on and Dexter can think of absolutely nothing to say in response when Deb stutters angrily, "Fuck, Dex. You're supposed to be... You're supposed to be _out_!"

"Um, no. I'm not." Dexter can only look after the boy as he scrambles up and rushes out of the house without even a backward glance at Deb. Dexter wonders if this means he doesn't have to go after him and beat him up like a manly brother like he's supposed to be. He turns back to his sister, not sure what to do, really. "Uh, had fun?"

Dexter barely avoids the cushion she throws at his face.

* * *

For days, she doesn't speak to him or even glance at him. This is a new territory - Deb always forgives and forgets, no matter how mad she has been, if it involves him. Even when she was grounded for two months after Dad discovered her unauthorized gun-usage thanks to Dexter's help, she started babbling to him about things of no consequences in two days flat. So this is a worrisome development, which he supposes that he _is_ supposed to care about. Does he care, though?

He thinks it for two minutes or so, a relatively short process, and decides that he does, and that the silence bothers him. This silence is oddly alien, and he would like her to speak to him again, even about the most inane things she seemed to enjoy telling him, and fill this silence. So. Good. This is going to be easier if he doesn't actually have to fake the emotion of this "want."

Deb has yet again barricaded herself in her room, and he devises his plans. He just needs to confront her, make sure she understands-

Understand what? He's still not sure what kind of grave offense he has committed, but if he has learned anything about this big brother business, it's that there's nothing rational about baby sisters. Which can be frustrating, without rational reasoning as a possible negotiation tool.

For the tenth time that day alone, Dexter knocks on Deb's door. And for the tenth time, he's greeted with a mixture of colorful adjectives and even more colorful expletives. He catches something about hating him and not wanting to see him again, ever. He wonders, not for the first time, that it might not be a good idea for a girl of her age to be hanging out too much with cops and maybe Harry should do something about it. Encourage her to get a more girl-like hobby, or something.

It's quite irrationally illogical, however, to imagine Deb sitting down, sewing something or knitting something pink, so the thought is dispelled instantly.

He tries again when there is enough of a pause between the stream of swear words. "Look, Deb, don't be a baby. Just..." The door still doesn't budge, and he suppresses a sudden, irrational urge to kick it open. "Would you just open up and listen to me for a sec? Just open up, okay?"

This time, there's response. Not even the familiar expletive.

He knocks the door for the eleventh time, practically with his forehead because he's sure that using his hand would lead to banging down the door with his fist, and he does not particularly enjoy losing control over emotions, especially his. "Deb, seriously, dinner's getting cold. It's your favorite. You know, Doritos...thingy."

Nothing again. It's odd, because suddenly he is hit by this sharp pang in his heart, this "missing" that he's not familiar with, and when received, all this turns into a ball of frustration.

"Deb?"

He briefly considers unlocking the door and stops himself when a fleeting, dangerous thought about using the key-opener occurs to him. No. That particular skill of his does not cross over to this, here, where he has to be Deb's brother. Never. "Deb, you can't stay in your room forever."

Silence.

Okay, so maybe she can.

Dexter comes down to the kitchen, sets the table for one, and eats the cold Doritos potion while reading the physiology textbook so that he doesn't have to notice the lack of familiar chatter.

The food tastes even less than he remembers. He finishes eating in silence.

* * *

It lasts four days.

He catches her when he comes back from basketball earlier than expected. Later on, Dexter would think back to the moment and wonder if he returned early exactly on purpose. He is not sure. The number of things about which he feels uncertain has rapidly increased on these four days, and he cannot say why.

She is just about to leave the kitchen, shoving her share of sandwich and a can of coke into her backpack, ready to head out, and she looks up just as he enters the house. She looks vaguely guilty for a moment – at least, what he assumes to be guilt, because the look in her eyes sends him back to one moment in time ("I wish Dad never brought you—") – but then she whirls around and turns towards the front door.

Dexter is left alone in the living room, in silence. He still has his hand on his backpack, on the couch handle. Sweat trickles down his forehead, neck, and back, and his eyes sting. He feels dusty and hot, both of which he always finds unpleasant, and the air in the house suffocates him.

His fingers furl into a fist. Which is why he doesn't think about the fact that they're trembling.

And they don't, when they grab Deb's shoulder and turn her around. "Where're you going?"

Her eyes catch his, but only briefly. She slaps his hand away and looks away. "Fuck off, Dex."

He shoulders the front door, blocking her way. Repeats the question slowly. "Where are you going, Deb?"

At that her eyes snap back to meet his. "It's none of your fucking business!"

"It is my business. You're my sister—"

She rolls her eyes, and something about that gets under his skin, crawling and uneasy. "Sure, keep telling yourself that." She slips around him to reach for the door knob.

He jerks her back, and he doesn't realize that his hand is squeezing her shoulder until she flinches from the pressure. "I'm supposed to know where you are at all times."

"Why? So you can tell Dad about what a big disappointment I am, making out with boys like a slut? So you can tell him I'm nothing like a proud son that _you_ are!"

"That's not—" how exactly does she come up with such improbable logical leaps? He pauses for a second and rakes his fingers through his hair. What to say. Fuck. This brother shit just keeps getting better. What to say now - "Dad cares about you. We care about you—"

A sudden slap at his chest brings his confused ramble to a stop, and when he looks up, there are tears brimming in her eyes, and now he is just completely, utterly lost.

"No, you don't. You don't care. And that's fine, whatever, but then why do you always do this? Why can't you just leave me alone? Why can't you just go away!"

She shoves at him, her eyes furious, but he catches her retreating arms in the mid-air.

"No, Deb, _dammit_ " - he is upset, more than he should reasonably be, but he does not have the time to sit still and analyze and process this new burst of frustration he doesn't remember ever experiencing. Their arms are tangled, with her wrists in his hands, and he succumbs to the urge to shake her, hard - "just stop and listen to me for a moment, all right?"

"Let me go! Let me go, you jerk!"

She shakes her arms wildly, trying to slip out from his grip. He doesn't let go. Instead, he responds in kind and presses harder, until he can feel her soft skin right under his palms.

It must have hurt, because she winces. Her pulse, under his fingertips, quickens.

"Let me go, Dex." Her voice is tiny now, and when she looks up at him, there is something else in her eyes, something he does recognize from the eyes of the things he killed. Fear. This is fear. Of all the emotions that Deb has for him, he is reasonably sure that fear has never been one of them.

Something is wrong. He knows this, somewhere deep down. The girl in front of him is the only other person in the world who he is supposed to care about. But something leaps inside him, fascinated, enthralled, and for a second he wonders what it will be like if he pushed harder, just a little bit.

She stops trying to wiggle away from his grip and looks up. Her breathing is labored, her big eyes like those of a deer that knows its time is up, and something else goes off inside him, a rubber band thinly stretched and then snapped. He pushes his hands against the wall behind her, trapping her with his height. He feels the sweat beads trailing down from the side of his face, his entire body tense, like how he feels just before the hunt, and wonders, absently, why this should be.

"Dex, please -"

Debra never says please. Not voluntarily.

This pleases him somehow, as much as her pulsing blood that he can feel against his skin.

Her hands start to push back at his chest, at his body, but that's no hindrance - he has her trapped. Her hair brushes across his cheek, and when his lips brushes her cheek and her neck, she makes this noise, the one heard from the couch moment, and he thinks about how it is biologically improbable to be attracted to the ones you grow up with, which would also apply to any other impulses, like his. It should be. It should –

No.

He's staring down at a patch of skin on her neck not covered by her long, cascading hair.

 _No_.

Carotid artery, he thinks.

And _it_ -

"Dex, just let—"

 _\- is here_.

A second later, he has her pushed up against the wall, one hand scooped around her neck, his thumb pressing on the skin just above the artery. Her skin is soft, surprisingly cooler than he expected, smooth. The heat is there, too. The heat of the blood. And _it_ is there instantly, wanting this, wanting _this_.

And it is ridiculously easy. He curls his fingers around her neck, imprinting it like it is his. When he looks down, he realizes she has closed her eyes, and suddenly he is usurped by an urge to shake her eyes open - _Why aren't you fucking running? You've got no instinct? Why don't you know?_ – and the other that clinically approves the situation. Pretty ideal. The target isolated and there's no one and he has time and like Harry teaches—

 _Harry_.

His hand pauses, and her eyes flutter open.

And they see him.

Eyes still wide, Deb freezes only for a second before slipping under his shoulder.

Dexter remains on the spot, his hand still in the midair, still touching the warmth of the space that his sister was just occupying.

When he collects himself enough to turn around, she's already bolted outside, through the backdoor, to the outside world. Safe.

From him.

His fingers stop trembling.

* * *

He weighs his options.

He can dispatch Deb, which might directly resolve the current problem on many different fronts. To his relief, _it_ would be silenced, for one, and Deb would be silenced along the line. This is ideal, even if it creates another problem in that Harry would likely know it was him. But then again, this might even offer something else – a way out. Out of the life into the one unimaginable – the one without Harry and Harry's code.

If Dexter hasn't already been familiar with the idea of temptation, he is pretty much convinced of its magnificence this time.

He cannot predict what Deb will do. What she will say to Harry, Dexter cannot fathom. Which means, she needs to be dispatched.

He wonders if he wants to, though.

He thinks on it for five minutes and decides that he doesn't want Deb to be not around.

The thought, of course, is not helpful. It offers no solutions but creates even more problems.

Twilight is settling in, though no thoughts are. Dexter leans against the doorframe and stares at the tool shed in the corner of the backyard. He can't hear any sound. He has done a fairly good job muffling any hole that noise might escape through.

His hands unfurl.

He walks across the yard and kneels down when he reaches the tool shed. When he opens its door, he can hear the faint whimper. Once his eyes adjust to the darkness inside the shed, he can see the prey crumbled at the corner. Still alive, staring back at him in silence. Almost accusingly, but obviously he's reading too much into the situation.

He doesn't have any equipment, but his hands will do just fine.

"What're you doing?"

The voice isn't loud enough to make him jump, but it comes pretty close. He freezes for a fraction of a second before turning around slowly and finding Deb standing behind him.

Conundrum. Deb looks a little flushed, like she has been taking a long walk ever since she's bolted from the house hours ago. She's not exactly meeting his eyes, and her hands are playing with the edges of her jackets. Fidgety. Uncomfortable. But still, right in front of him.

It will be easy.

 _No_. Not Deb.

His hands do not move.

"A stray puppy," he manages to say. He turns around and waves at the darkness inside the shed. "I think it snuck in there and got trapped. Or something."

He didn't need to be bothered with any explanation, it seems like. Deb gasps once and darts straight to the dog. Between rescuing the puppy and bringing it out, she sees nothing else, the least of all the potentially dubious things such as towels and old shirts stuck between the gaps of the shack's wooden panels to muffle the noise. In a minute, she has the dog in her arms, cooing and scratching behind its ears.

"Oh, you poor thing," she whispers at it, snuggling and tickling its nose with hers. "You must've been scared to death. Why are you trembling, sweetie? Are you cold? Are you hungry?"

It licks her nose and responds pretty happily, obviously enjoying her full attention. Dex, on the other hand, stands at the side, feeling pretty out of place. She doesn't glance at him once, at least not before she has the puppy fed and tucked onto Harry's old sweatshirts at one corner of their living room.

She scratches and pats the puppy as it happily chews at a couple of hot dog.

"'m sorry."

She says so quietly that Dexter almost misses it.

When he catches her eyes, she's looking away, blushing furiously. "I mean, I made you mad. So, you know, 'm sorry."

He stares back. Pretty much in astonishment, but she seems to take his silence as something else and starts to look guilty and irritated. "Say something, Dex. I really didn't mean anything I said, okay? Sorry for flipping out and yelling and...Okay?"

He doesn't know what to say. He is having enough difficulty processing that she thinks it was her fault that he snapped. That he almost went with the idea of...

She never saw it. Why, he doesn't understand, but she didn't see it. She doesn't see it.

"I'm sorry, too," he finally answers, when he cannot think of any other answer that is appropriate.

She looks away again, and her hair cascades over her shoulders and shadows her face. "I don't want you mad at me. I mean, you're my brother."

She loves me, Dexter realizes. Why and how of it, he will never understand, but she does. She doesn't see anything else, doesn't even _try_ to see anything else, because she loves him.

He is truly mystified.

And then, of course, she says—

"I want to keep 'im."

Uh-oh.

There's no doubt as to what she's referring to. She holds onto the puppy like her life depends on it. "Will you tell Dad with me? Please? Please, Dex?"

Harry's answer will be, of course, a no. Harry wouldn't allow them to keep a dog in the house knowing fully well that it'd be the likeliest and fastest candidate for Dexter's next hunting when _it_ hits him again. Also? Animals hate him on sight, and this particular puppy is no exception.

However, Deb is staring at him with all the hopes of the world full in her deer-eyes, and there's this odd, inexplicable compulsion he feels, this impossibility of saying 'no'.

He wonders if this is what feeling is supposed to be. Wonders that, if it is, maybe he should be glad he doesn't have any feelings to speak of.

"Deb, I really don't think—"

And yet. He cannot say no.

"Please? Please please please, Dex. I'll love you forever."

And she means it, because this is Deb, with her soft, big heart. She will continue to mean it until she sees him for what he is. What then?

He won't let that happen. Not if he can help it.

"Okay, we'll try," he says, almost shocking himself. "We can _try_ , okay?" he pleads in half panic when she jumps up and hugs him. " _Try_ being the operating word. Dad wouldn't let us anyway, so don't get so attached yet. I mean, there's no way...hey, are you even listening to me?"

Of course she isn't, because she's already pacing the room, coming up with its names and ticking them off her fingers as she goes, and then listing things they need like a dog house and proper pet food and pet parkas and god knows what else.

She will never see him. He'll make sure of it.

And Dexter is nothing if not a meticulous planner.

"Can I name him Spike?" Deb asks, her face containing nothing but a huge grin.

"Anything you want," Dexter answers.

* * *

Harry comes home and finds Deb and Spike outside at the backyard. Harry whirls around to stare at Dex so hard and so fast that Dexter briefly worries that Harry could have snapped his neck.

"Dexter." The question in his voice is unmistakable.

He stares back. "Let her keep him, Dad."

Harry's lips are pressed into a thin line. "You know we can't keep a dog in our house." His disapproving look says 'You should know better.'

Dexter _does_ know better. Of course he does. Of course he full well knows why, but yet.

Yet.

"It means a lot to her, Dad. It's a stray dog, and no one would care that we keep it for a few days. At least, until we find its owner. It can't be for more than a couple of days."

Harry meets his eyes for a long moment, and Dexter turns his eyes to the backyard, at his sister.

In the brightness of the outside world, Deb is rolling on the grass with Spike, laughing and tickling. Spike licks at her face and she giggles away. Happy.

He can feel Harry's eyes on him, but he doesn't tear his eyes away from the scene at the backyard. Eventually, Harry comes to his side and stands beside him, his hand on Dexter's shoulder.

It's a yes.

The sun still burns on Dexter's skin and sweat trickles down his forehead. And yet, it - _it_ \- is still safely tucked away. It's fascinating. This moment, with Harry standing by his side and Deb in the brightness, is so transient, like he is blindly tracing, grasping patterns drawn in air, never to be fully captured – apparently this is what happiness is made of.

This. So, now he knows.

All this, he will kill to keep.

* * *

 **END**


End file.
